At the time, the Chinese economy was languishing at about 10 percent of America’s GNP. It seemed unrealistic that the Chinese would dare to dream about truly surpassing the United States. All official Washington heard was that China wanted a new dance partner. President Nixon would have to decide whether to cut in. Thus began a relationship with consequences far more profound than any of us at the time dared to consider. The Chinese planned to use the Americans as they had used the Soviets—as tools for their own advancement, all the while pledging cooperation against a third rival power. This was how the Marathon was conducted throughout most of the Cold War—China using the Soviet Union’s rivalry with America to extract Soviet aid and then, when that faltered, shifting to the Americans by offering to help against the Soviets. In doing so, the Chinese were reflecting another ancient stratagem—“kill with a borrowed sword”—or, in other words, attack using the strength of another. Four decades later, shortly after Xi Jinping assumed office as general secretary of the Communist Party of China (a precursor to his becoming president), he provided a greater glimpse of China’s underlying intentions. In his maiden speech in his new role, Xi used a phrase that no Chinese leader had ever used in a public speech, qiang zhongguo meng, or “strong nation dream.” The comment was remarkable. China’s leaders are extremely careful with their language, especially in public, far more so than Western politicians. They avoid words such as “dream” or “hopes” in their public remarks. Such emotion-laden sentiments are considered a flaky, Western eccentricity. However, Xi has since made repeated references to the “China dream” in his speeches. According to a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, Xi referred to 2049 as the date the dream will be realized—one hundred years after Mao Zedong’s ascension in China and the formation of the Communist state. Xi’s reference was neither casual nor inadvertent. A veteran of the People’s Liberation Army and a former secretary to the defense minister, Xi is closely connected to the nationalist “super hawks” in the Chinese military. As I discovered from my own conversations with some native Chinese speakers in Xi’s audience, those educated in the country’s universities and members of the military understood Xi’s reference to the “strong nation dream” immediately. By invoking the “strong nation dream,” President Xi was referring to a once-obscure book—obscure, that is, in the West—published in China in 2009 called The China Dream. The book was written by a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army named Liu Mingfu, then working as a leading scholar at China’s National Defense University, which trains future generals of the People’s Liberation Army. It was there that I first spotted a specific written reference to “the Hundred-Year Marathon.” The China Dream became a nationwide best seller. The book, only parts of which have been translated into English, outlined how China will become the world’s leading power, surpassing and then replacing the United States. It analyzed how the Soviet Union had failed to supplant the United States, and an entire chapter was devoted to the eight ways China’s effort would be different. The phrase Liu adopted as his own—“the Hundred-Year Marathon”—held resonance across China, though the word marathon itself is borrowed from English. The concept is more readily referred to in Mandarin as China’s “rejuvenation” within a “just” world order or, in keeping with the book’s title, “the China Dream.” The word for rejuvenation or restoration (fuxing) seems to be synonymous with Marathon, assuming it takes a century counting from 1949. China is both secretive and sensitive about the end state of the Marathon. It has never spelled out exactly what the final fuxing will be like, except to declare it will be a good thing. Liu’s book called for a world-class military to project China’s global leadership. “China’s grand goal in the 21st century is to become the world’s No. 1 power,” Liu declared. “The competition between China and the United States,” he predicted, “will not be like a ‘shooting duel’ or a ‘boxing match’ but more like a ‘track and field’ competition. It will be like a protracted ‘Marathon.’” At the end of the Marathon, Liu contended, the ruler finally will be the most virtuous power on the planet—the Chinese. When asked in 2010 by an ABC News reporter about his provocative work, Liu held firm on the book’s central positions, but stressed that China’s competition and ultimate victory over the West would be peaceful. But for those of us able to read his book in the original Mandarin, that is not the tone he adopts there. The colonel alludes to the importance of studying American weaknesses, and preparing to hit the Americans once the West becomes wise to China’s true game plan. Liu also hints at the existence of an official Marathon strategy among the Chinese leadership, praising Mao Zedong because “he dared to craft a grand plan to surpass America, stating that beating the United States would be China’s greatest contribution to humanity.” As the Wall Street Journal revealed in 2013, The China Dream is featured in the “recommended reading” section of all state-controlled bookstores.
The China Dream. I was just reading about it and it seems there are many interpretations about what it really means as it is a rather broad concept. From the author, one key aspect of the China Dream is about outlining China’s rise to being the leading power of the world.
Earlier and also later in the book, Pillsbury spoke about how many American leaders assumed that China would take on liberal values as its economy developed. There are many ways to view this. One may take it as “arrogance” that America might assume the world would naturally adopt its values with economic development. Another way might simply be American leaders being unable to internalise or truly understand certain aspects of Chinese values due to cultural differences. I’ll be sharing some further passages in this book to shed more light on this.
